Forests and Rice

At an interesting talk right now. The point it's making is that naively, we view (re)forestation as a simple win for carbon dynamics: forests = sequestration and new forests are the best, because old-growth forests are basically in carbon balance, just storing carbon, while new forests are actively sequestering carbon that would otherwise stay in the atmosphere, lowering the net carbon content.

Of course, forest management can be a great tool for carbon management. But what complicates this is that not all forests and settings are created equal. If we engage in willy-nilly forestation that don't fit the ecological history and profile of the setting, we may fail to account for unintended consequences like catastrophic fires and the large carbon releases they create.

Edit: Now listening to a talk by a bioengineer whose team is currently testing a bioengineered rice plant with a gene that allows it to survive sitting in a submerged field for 17 days (ordinary rice dies after about three days of submersion.) Since most of Bangladesh is going to become increasingly prone to catastrophic flooding with global warming, this as a big deal. SUPER COOL.

Get-green-quick schemes

For every generation of environmental problems, there is a group of scientists willing to come up with whacky Rube Goldberg solutions:

Leon Sadler of Alabama University says we could do it [fix an ozone hole] by injecting 5,000 tonnes of ozone into the stratosphere a day for a century. You could, he says, hitch small ozone generators to ordinary commercial aircraft which could spray the ozone into the stratosphere on their normal flights, or you could fly special flights from world ozone production centres or even fire frozen 'bullets' of ozone into the air from special guns. 

--Fred Pearce, The Sunday Times (London), Mar. 5, 1989.

Frozen ozone bullets. From special guns.

Acronyms

The world of international climate negotiations is a wonderland of UN-style acronyms. My favorite is LULUCF, which stands for land use, land use change, and forestry. It's a clunky catch-all for the aspect of carbon emissions and carbon emissions mitigation that has to do, basically, with forests and other greenery - removing them (releasing emissions) or installing them (providing a carbon sink) or otherwise changing them.

News Roundup 11.25.11

General News & Politics
Emerging economies should chip into climate fund: U.S. (Reuters, Nov. 18)
Todd Stern, lead US negotiator, suggests the proposed $100B climate fund should have contributions from some developing countries as well as the developed countries. Norway and Bangladesh have called on countries like Brazil and China to contribute.

Climate change funding "at risk" (China Daily, Nov. 23)
Judging by the quotes in this article, China's attitude going into the upcoming UNFCCC meeting is 1) push for continued funding from the developed countries, 2) push for a reupped commitment on Kyoto (though can they possibly be optimistic about that?), 3) insist on "common but differentiated responsibilities" (which is code for "no explicit targets for developing nations"), and 4) emphasize that they'll be continuing to meet internal targets (presumably as an alternative to external commitments). China is worried that the promised $100B in funding won't be coming on line with the ongoing crisis (China urges progress on financing for $100 billion climate change fund, Washington Post, Nov. 21)

Oregon steps back from Western Climate Initiative (Sustainable Business Oregon, Nov. 23)
Oregon was the last US state other than CA to be involved, with four Canadian provinces, in the WCI's effort to establish a regional carbon cap-and-trade program. Article says the states formerly involved (Oregon, Washington, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah) are focusing on North America 2050, "an organization that is still being formed". Don't know much about NA2050; a rather vague info sheet is here, but it seems to basically be a collection of working groups.

US refuses to back climate fund blueprint (Financial Times, Nov. 24)
"The US, which has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, has said it wants more work on issues such as private sector involvement in the Green Climate Fund and which countries would contribute. Saudi Arabia wants compensation for oil-producing countries for revenues lost as a result of climate change actions."

China to probe US clean energy subsidies (Financial Times, Nov. 25)
"Trade tensions have been rising between the US and China ever since the office of the US Trade Representative initiated an investigation into Chinese wind subsidies last year." China's considering filing a case with the WTO.

Looking ahead to COP-17: Deferred deal may save COP-17 (Mail & Guardian Online, Nov. 25) Suggests there's a potential consensus around a "deferred agreement" focusing on a mandate for a new emissions control deal starting in 2020 rather than 2012 (when Kyoto ends). Since the Chinese don't appear to be on board (China wants the Kyoto Protocol, with its "differentiated responsibilities" extended) and there's no mention of the US, I'd say this is just a European attempt to find a positive spin. This rather pessimistic analysis (IPS, Nov. 24) is probably closer to the mark. Important note, however: even if Kyoto expires and isn't renewed, some things that exist under the overarching UNFCCC framework - which I believe includes the Clean Development Mechanism, the promised $100B in green development funding for developing nations (if they can fund it), and the funding for forest preservation - will still exist.) A report from WRI (WRI, Nov. 23) suggests focusing on MRV (measuring, reporting, and verification) as the important issue in COP-17; that was one of the areas the US focused on in Cancun and made some progress there.

Climategate II: the scientists fight back (Telegraph, Nov. 25)
Another hacked-emails-leaked-by-climate-change-skeptics event happened. The world seems uninterested.

Markets
China's Feed-in Tariff Policy Stimulates 14 GW Photovoltaic Project Pipeline (Solarbuzz.com, Oct. 10)
China released a photovoltaic feed-in tariff in July.

On the ground with clean power in India (GigaOm.com, Nov. 18)

A roundup of cleanpower stuff in India: solar companies, new subsidies, new CEO for GE India (Banmali Agrawala), smart grid (pilot ideas), solar power missing completion deadlines.

Tata Capital, IFC set up joint venture for climate change business (The Economic Times, Nov. 19)
Tata and a World Bank group company are setting up a cleantech financing and advisory joint venture.

Saudi Arabia halts $100bn oil expansion programme (Financial Times, Nov. 21)
Saudi Arabia is halting at the 12m barrel per day mark. Although this article doesn't say so - and SA offers a variety of other reasons - I've seen some commentators suggest that this in combination with Saudi remarks represents a tacit admission that they can't make the 15m bpd goal they've previously talked about. The IEA estimates that Iraq will be the biggest contributor to global oil supply growth between 2010 and 2035.

EU carbon permits drop to record low as European debt crisis trims demand (Bloomberg, Nov. 23)
"'The combination of multiple supply side fears and simply not enough demand from utilities means prices have little support,' Chatterton [analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance] said... Falling prices together with an oversupply of carbon permits in Europe may reduce the incentive for companies to cut emissions. As factories slow operations there is less need to buy extra permits to comply with the system's rules. Surplus permits can be held over for use in the third phase of the market... Carbon allowances may drop as low as 3 euros because of weaker demand and 'staggering' supply..."

Tech
Bipartisan Tax Credit Would Open Market for Energy Storage (PR Newswire, Nov. 10)
Sens. Wyden (OR), Collins (ME), and Bingaman (NM) introduced a bill for a tax credit for energy storage technologies of all types.

Datacenters: Friend or Foe? (TriplePundit, Nov. 19)
Interesting numbers (from a McKinsey report, available here) on datacenters and energy consumption/carbon emissions. "If datacenters were a country, they would produce the equivalent of 60 percent of the emissions generated by Argentina."

Climate Science
Climate change effect on release of CO2 from peat far greater than assumed (EurekAlert.org, Nov. 20)
Yet another feedback effect.

Introductions are the best part...

What's up with academics putting all this interesting stuff into their introductions and then not following up? Sprinz and Vashtoranta (1994) introduce their paper on domestic interests in international environmental negotiation by doing a bunch of talking about various possible applications of domestic interests. Some of this is cool and close to my thinking. For instance, they write, "...a country may promote regulations that would benefit it by increasing international demand for its pollution abatement technology and its substitute compounds" and "If the environment of a country is affected by domestic emissions, it is expected to favor international harmonization of environmental policies in order to avoid disadvantages in international competitiveness." (78-79)

But in the end, they boil all this down to a two-by-two that cross-references costs (expected expense of abatement, high or low) and vulnerability (expected impact of environmental degradation, high or low), and postulates country interest based on that. Boring.

What makes polluting firms clean up their act?

I was kind of psyched about Arora & Cason 1996, which does what it says on the tin: the title is "Why Do Firms Volunteer to Exceed Environmental Regulations?"

This paper looks at what types of firms choose to enroll in the EPA's 33/50 program, a voluntary program that assists firms in making cutbacks to toxic releases. The program provides assistance for firms that sign up to attempt to meet its goals of reducing releases of certain pollutants. The program goals are more stringent than what actually regulation requires, so the firms are in some sense agreeing to go above and beyond. So it seems like an interesting question: what types of firms make that decision; in other words, what makes companies choose to be good?

Sadly, academia is a land of disappointment. The answer doesn't reveal any miraculous strategies for getting polluting firms to voluntarily clean up their act.

First off, a major nitpick: reading the article, it turns out that some of the toxic substances covered in the program are ozone depleting substances that are subject to caps by the (at the time) new Montreal Protocol restrictions. Thus, while firms that worked cleaning their act up with regard to these substances were indeed technically exceeding what regulation at the time required them to do, they were facing impending caps on these releases, making those actions less voluntarily motivated than they look. I couldn't find a clear statement in the article of how much of the target population that was true of.

Beyond that, they reasons don't end up being all that interesting. Firms that spend more on advertising were more likely to enroll; that makes sense, since firms that spend on advertising are (essentially by definition) sensitive about their public image. Bigger firms were more likely to enroll; that makes sense, since bigger firms have more resources and more public exposure. Firms that emit more pollution (in absolute terms AND per employee) are more likely to enroll; that makes sense, since they're the ones who need help figuring out how to clean up their act. Firms that don't emit much pollution have no reason to sign up for a reduction program. (Theoretically, if the program had some big payoff but required action the firms really didn't want to take, we might see firms sorting the other way - big polluters steer clear so they don't have to spend, while small polluters enroll to cash in on the payoff without having to do much. But the program doesn't really have such a payoff; all you get from it as far as I can tell is stuff like training and workshops. So there isn't much incentive to try to game the system - those that sign up seem to be those that actually need and want the program.)

Oh well, negative findings are important too. Anyway, the takeaway is that the EPA's 33/50 program doesn't seem to teach us anything particularly exciting about eliciting firm cooperation on pollution clean-up. Regulation and public pressure are the things that do the trick.

The oil weapon

I went to a talk recently that put an interesting spin on the oil weapon concept. In the 1970s the Arab states attempted to use the "oil weapon" to punish the US and... the Netherlands, I think? anyway, one or more of the European countries, to try to get them to change their Israel policy.

What we mainly learned from this is that the oil weapon in its classical sense is not very useful. The oil embargo of the 1970s DID cause a lot of economic pain generally, but it was a very blunt instrument. It punished the whole world without inflicting a particularly large share of punishment on the targets, it didn't really succeed in altering US policy much, and it was pretty much as inconvenient for the Arab states as it was for everyone else. Eventually, Saudi Arabia decided to play nice with the US and unilaterally boost production, ending the attempt and beginning a long and beautiful friendship.

What the talk focused on, though, was Iran and how all this affected Iran's relationship to the Arab states. Iran had previously been the US's big partner in the region, but it had been an increasingly recalcitrant one, repeatedly demanding and getting US "permission" to raise oil prices without US opposition. On the strength of high oil prices, Iran ran up a bunch of debt to fund domestic stuff. When the Saudis unilaterally raised production, bringing oil prices down, Iran couldn't pay off those debts, and this helped destabilize the state, ending an era and permanently shifting the balance of power in the area in Saudi Arabia's favor as well as rearranging the alliance structure with the US. In other words, the "oil weapon" worked quite well against Iran. And there seems to be no reason that can't generalize - the states that are always going to be most vulnerable to manipulation of the oil markets aren't consumer states, but rather, producer states that rely on oil wealth but don't control enough of it to set the market rates. Something similar might happen with gas if LNG becomes ubiquitous enough to make natural gas a similar market to oil, rather than a pipeline-based distribution system. (and since Iran has huge LNG resources, that might hold the promise of a second era of fossil fuel power for them).

China's rare earth industry

As I've mentioned before, one of my threads of interest is how shifts in the world's energy economy might cause shifts in the importance of various resources and who holds them. One major area is that of rare and exotic minerals, which are used in things like CFLs and batteries.

Along those lines, this article on China's rare-earth mining industry, how they cornered the world market (it's not because they're the only place that has rare-earth resources), and what our alternatives are is really interesting, really worth reading, and pretty short.

Too hot, too cold, and just right are not created equal

In International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society (which is more reasonable than I think its title implies), Oran Young (1994) writes:

It is worth emphasizing the extent to which most scientists and many policy-makers have joined forces in an effort to focus attention on climate change as a common problem and the avoid becoming bogged down in battles regarding putative winners and losers. The work of the IPCC during 1989 and 1990 certainly helped set this tone, and the negotiators operating within the INC have carried on, for the most part, in the same vein. This spirit of cooperation does not guarantee that progress will be made on a climate regime without running afoul of distributive concerns triggered by a growing preoccupation with the identification of probable winners and lowers in the wake of global warming. So far, however, in this case uncertainty has served to soften the problems associated with distributive bargaining. (43)

This is nice, but there are two problems here that make this largely irrelevant. One is that it's only true in a very bounded way: yes, there hasn't been as much discussion of winners and losers at the country vs. country level. But there has been a whole lot of discussion of winners and losers at the industry level, and that discussion has had serious political ramifications.

But that makes sense. We'd expect to see discussion of winners and losers at the industry rather than the national level, because that's where the winners/losers divide will mostly matter. The second problem with the argument above is that the winner/loser debate just isn't very important at the country-vs.-country level, because it's highly one-sided. All the players who matter will be losers from the climate change; with the possible exception of Russia, there's no one important who will be a winner.

There's a simple reason for this. We can think of the world as divided into three Goldilocks zones: right now, some places are too hot, some places are too cold, and some places are just right. Only one of these three zones will win from climate change: the too-cold zone, which will edge closer to just-right. The too-hot zone will become even hotter, and the just-right zone will become less right.

But almost all of the states that really matter in an emissions treaty (to review, that's the states with a significant share of current or future emissions: the US, Europe, China, Japan, India, Russia, maaaaybe Brazil and Indonesia) are clustered in the zone that's currently more or less just right. That's because life is more tenable and economic development is easier in the just-right zone, so that's where the money and population is currently clustered. There are no winners here because no one benefits from making the just-right zone less right (again, the possible exception is Russia, because it, alone among the key temperate-zone players, is a major oil exporter and has a fair chunk of land in the too-cold zone.)

Strategic use of courts

Today, a quick side note that isn't particularly relevant to my research but which came up in reading (Gehring 2010, in Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations, which I've mentioned before) and which I thought was interesting: one way to get out of a deadlock is to litigate your way out of it. There are enough court or court-like forums out there that one strategy, if you are in deadlock with a negotiating partner or partners, is to strategically bring a case to one of these courts that deals with the issue at hand, and then use the result as a basis for building an agreement. I think this is particularly common in Europe (which has a particularly important history of codifying court case results into regional law), but it happens in other contexts too.

I think this is neat because it isn't obvious why it should work. Of course, it sets a precedent, and there may be a certain level of effect based on the idea that once an alternate, court-based mechanism for dispute resolution has been used, countries ought to expect it to be used again and therefore might as well codify the results. Still, it seems to me that at least part of the effect is basically psychological, and you can imagine a variety of ways that could be true. For instance, there's a lot of general evidence that negotiations tend to coalesce around arbitrary points of convergence once those arbitrary points are mutually known to everyone, so a court ruling could serve that purpose (some have argued this is basically what happened with the early history of the EU). Alternately, a court ruling could change people's estimations of the credibility of their opponents' positions: if I thought you were bluffing before, and I could get you to back down if I negotiated hard enough, a court ruling in your favor on a specific issue might suggest that you weren't bluffing (and even if you had been, that you might not be now).